Gossip Girl episode recap for 'Easy J'

The winds have shifted and tables have turned on the Upper East Side-- a monster with blonde extensions, smudged makeup and a horrible attitude is back in Manhattan and stirring up trouble.

On this week’s episode of Gossip Girl Jenny Humprey returns for a fashion interview with Tim Gunn, Serena navigates her relationship with a new teacher and Nate continues to suspect that Juliet still isn’t telling the truth.

The main players:

Chuck and Blair’s war has brought Queen B’s biggest rival back into the city. Jenny Humphrey has returned for a special interview with Tim Gunn at Parson’s School of Design—which was orchestrated and set up by Chuck as a way to get back at Blair.

Of course, when Blair gets wind that her rival has come back to Manhattan, she makes her way over to the van der Woodsen apartment to put Little J in her place. It seems Blair had banished Jenny from New York City, and her being back is breaking the rules. At first, Jenny explains that she is not there to argue or bring up the past—she simply wants to go to her interview and stay under the radar.

Blair grants Jenny a “day pass” so that she can go to her interview. But she puts regulations on Jenny’s visit—no leaving the apartment (except for her interview) and no seeing anyone. Blair even sends her minions to watch and make sure Jenny doesn’t leave. Jenny agrees to the terms and even seems willing to abide by them. When Rufus asks if she’d like to go to dinner to celebrate her return, Jenny says she would rather stay in.

But when Chuck shows up at the van der Woodsen/Humprey house—feigning like he want to apologize to Jenny for everything that happened—he ends up stealing her fashion portfolio. Jenny cannot go to the interview without her portfolio and is forced to go get it from Chuck at the Empire Hotel.

When Blair gets word that Jenny broke the rules and left her apartment, she comes up with a plan to ruin Jenny once and for all. With a phone call to Tim Gunn’s studio, Blair manages to come up with an evil and low scheme.

While Jenny is in her interview with Tim Gunn (yes, the real Tim Gunn is a guest star), she tries to convince the fashion icon that her dresses really speak to women of today. He asks to see them and a parade of models come out in the room, turn to face front and we see the masterwork of Blair’s plan—WHORE is spelled out on the dresses in bright red paint.

Tim Gunn has no stomach for this kind of fashion statement and asks Jenny to leave immediately. Jenny tries to explain, but it is too late.

Chuck phones Jenny after he sees what Blair did to her and invites her and Dan (who was playing big brother the whole episode) to a party at the Boom Boom Room for the New York Observer. He says that Tim Gunn will be in attendance and Jenny might be able to pull him aside and explain what happened.

Jenny agrees to go and at the party she manages to find Tim Gunn and get him alone. She explains that the dresses were not supposed to have the lettering and asks him if he could possibly give her a second chance. Being a forgiving guy, Tim Gunn agrees to set up another interview with her.

But Blair is not going to let Jenny just get her way and rule the roost. Blair shows up at the Observer party, ready to retaliate and make Jenny’s life miserable. The only problem is, Blair finally finds out that Chuck is the one behind Jenny’s return. And Blair is concerned with one piece of information slipping from Jenny’s mouth—the fact that Jenny lost her virginity to Chuck Bass and ruined Chuck and Blair’s epic love story.

Jenny thinks that everyone knows about why Blair banished her, but Penelope is the one to alert Jenny to the fact that no one knows the real story. With that information, Jenny has ammo and isn’t afraid to use it. She sends a tip to Gossip Girl, who then sends out the reputation-ruining blast to the entire crowd—humiliating Chuck and (more so) Blair in the process.

And just when Jenny thinks she’s back to the big time, her big brother knocks her down a notch. Dan tells his younger sister that she’s only been back for a day and is already back to her old ways of scheming to make Blair’s life a living hell. He suggests that she go back to Hudson.

And she does. Jenny decides to take the high road (or what’s left of it) and tells Chuck and Blair that she is leaving and cannot beat them at their game. She says that in order to beat them, she would have to become them, and she is better than that. So, once again, we say goodbye to Little J and await her return in the spring.

And all of this drama makes Chuck and Blair see what they’ve been doing to each other. At the end up of the episode, Chuck knocks on Blair’s bedroom door and says he wants to call a truce. He explains that they can’t blame anybody for what happened in the past—that it was fate and that they need to move on and stop the madness. Although Blair doesn’t buy his sincerity at first, she finally agrees to accept his offer and they shake hands. There is obviously still a ton of chemistry between them and we are sure that we haven’t seen the last interactions between Chuck and Blair.

At bat:

So Serena wakes up in the arms of a strange man in the beginning of this episode—surprise, surprise. The man happens to be the same one who was taking her taxis and getting on her nerves when she was trying to get to school. But she forgave him and they bonded over drinks at a hotel bar—which apparently ended in more than a few drinks. The guy’s name is Collin Forrester. He is suave, handsome and Serena seems to really like him. She tells Blair how much fun she had with him and plans to see him again.

But then she finds out that Collin also happens to be her new business teacher at Columbia. Uh oh.

At first, Serena plans to act like an adult and simply tell Collin that they can’t see each other romantically any more and that he shouldn’t treat her differently than any other student. But Collin, suggests that she simply drop his class so that they can continue to see each other and he invites her to a party (the Observer party where he is being given a Bachelor of the Year Award) instead. And Serena being Serena, agrees to drop the class and study Collin instead.

But then Lily ends up telling Serena how proud she is that Serena is taking such a difficult business class right out of the gate. She explains how excited she is to see Serena focusing on school instead of boys for once in her life. And Serena obviously begins to feel guilty about her decision to drop our of the business class so she could roll around with her professor.

Serena ends up going to the party with Collin, but little does she know, Lily, Rufus, Dan and Jenny also end up being in attendance. When Collin makes a show of affection for Serena right in front of Lily, the matriarch takes matters into her own hands.

Lily uses reverse psychology on her daughter. She says that she never really expected Serena to excel in such a class and that she’s not surprised about her decision to drop it. She drives home the fact that Serena has such a pretty face and that dating a guy like Collin is really all Serena needs to improve her life. Basically Lily says that Serena can’t do much more in life than sleep with rich men.

This offends Serena and she decides to leave the party and not see Collin romantically. Serena stops by his office to explain that she will continue to be in his class and says that she’s sorry that they can’t see each other. But Collin seems committed to simply making his class worthwhile for Serena and agrees to put off their romantic relationship until after the class has wrapped up.

We have a funny feeling that these two won’t be able to keep their hands off each other for very long.

Warming up:

Juliet has still got me all confused. I have yet to figure out this girl’s master plan and how it all ties together. In this episode, she keeps telling lies to Nate who continues to suspect she’s being dishonest with him.

After their night of love-making, instead of staying in bed, Juliet tells Nate that she can’t miss her classes and bails on him early in the morning. So Nate goes on with his day and decides to make a stop at the prison to visit his father—who was just transferred from another facility. At the prison, Nate happens to run into Juliet and he immediately becomes suspicious since she told him that she was going to class.

Although Nate comes clean about his reasons for being at the prison, Juliet tells him a lie and says that she is a volunteer for the prison’s literacy program. She tells Nate she just didn’t want him to feel like she was bailing on him for some convicts when she left that morning. Nate tentatively buys her lie once again.

But we know that Juliet has been going to the prison to see her brother Ben—who is somehow plotting with Juliet to ruin Serena’s life.

However, Juliet’s heart of ice seems to be melting and she appears to really be falling for Nate. She tells her brother that she wants to come clean and tell Nate everything. But prison-guy Ben retaliates and ends up beating up Nate’s father in jail. Mr. Archibald ends up in the infirmary and Nate rushes down to make sure he’s okay.

When he returns, Nate calls Juliet and asks her to come over, but she is crying and says that it is “just so hard.” Immediately, Nate assumes that Juliet is breaking up with him because she found out his father was in prison. He tells her that she’s like every other girl he’s ever known and hangs up.

And who does the bummed-out Juliet end up sharing a scene with at the end of the episode? Plot twist—Collin! Yes, Serena’s new teacher and love interest is also somehow involved in Juliet's big scheme. This isn’t looking good for Serena, now is it?

On the bench:

Dan’s role in this episode was pretty boring. He played Jenny’s big brother and that’s about it. He didn’t even have any good lines.

And Eric was in this episode—looking quite good if I may say so—but, once again, he didn’t have much to do with anything. He was happy Jenny was back, but that was about it.

Again, not much drama for Rufus and Lily. Seems like their marital problems have been put on hold for this season so far. But for how long?

Best plays of the night:

- Blair as a blind Audrey Hepburn in the dream sequence version of “Wait Until Dark” was pretty awesome.

- Blair to Serena: “Cab guy? What are the odds!” And then “No more cuddling or art talk. Tell him you need to be treated the same as everyone else, as if you’ve never met” - Jenny: “I have no interest in being G.I. Jenny anymore.” Yeah, we don’t buy this. Not even for a minute. But A for effort.

- I love how Serena doesn’t even give dropping a class in order to continue sleeping with her teacher a thought. It doesn’t even occur to her that it might not be a good idea. Points for character consistency.

- Chuck Bass back to his old ways—spent most of the episode with a beautiful blonde on each arm

- Tim Gunn. Just because he is Tim Gunn. And did you see the cameos from Isaac Mizrahi and Ivanka Trump as well?

- Blair basically near tears at the Observer party when the blast about Jenny went out was perfect.

- Jenny to Chuck and Blair: “You two used to be in love. Together you were invincible.” Wow, way to make them feel even worse Little J.

- Kudos to Gossip Girl for actually having a tricky storyline that continually surprises me. I still can’t figure out what is going on with Juliet and I appreciate that.

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